


Son of Ruin

by ImJaebabie



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depiction of Violence, M/M, Mystery, archaeologist kun!, please heed the archive warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:56:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImJaebabie/pseuds/ImJaebabie
Summary: Sea salt, sunshine, and legend. These things define the small, colorful coastal town for Kun, who brings one suitcase and an eagerness to touch the remnants of history on his trip to the remote island location.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Qian Kun
Comments: 7
Kudos: 68





	Son of Ruin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violetpeche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetpeche/gifts).



> for Any (violetpeche), a picture + pairing prompt turned early birthday gift. cross-posted from twt.
> 
> thank u for giving me the cornerstones to find this story & bring it back to u. i enjoyed it immensely.
> 
> (prompt photos can be found [here!](https://twitter.com/Imjaebabie/status/1318697986738802689?s=20))

Sea salt, sunshine, and legend. These things define the small, colorful coastal town for Kun, who brings one suitcase and an eagerness to touch the remnants of history on his trip to the remote island location. It's not just leisure; modern archeology demands presence, and Kun is only too happy to answer the call. Especially when it sounds from places with gorgeous vistas and mouthwatering cuisine.

But he is there to work.

It's work that has him sort out his various tools and brushes, his camera and notebook, and pack his day bag carefully.

From his hostel room down to the craggy shoreline is a short but steep walk, the cobbled street zig-zag in arrangement to make the descent possible. It's lined during the day with a small market, carts bright with fresh produce and locally made goods. Kun buys a woven sun hat.

The sea gleams in the sunlight as Kun passes between the boats that hug the sides of the road near the waves, but Kun turns before he reaches where they break on the dark rock to follow the road along the coastline instead. He waits at a stop there for the bus ride to the ruins.

Archaeology is a lesson in patience, and so it Is with each day of painstaking effort Kun works with the team to uncover what has been lost to time. Their site is a single home, a fragment from an ancient town; the slow whittling away of soil and overgrowth reveals it in pieces. Every day Kun takes the same route, works, and the route back, and tries a new one of the little corner bistros or a different cart along the main road before taking his rest back at the hostel. Each day, Kun passes by the sea and glances long at it, but doesn’t stop. 

They enter the room with the painted window on the sixth day of excavation. Kun brushes sweaty, curly blonde hair out of his eyes and adjusts his glasses, and marvels at it. A thousand years faded, somehow the worn blue reminds him of the view from his hostel window. He feels the sea in it, though the image is unclear, and a tug pulls in the depth of his heart.

On his way home that afternoon, Kun turns right from the bus stop and watches his steps on the salt-spray stone lapped by the waves. It’s sunset almost, and Kun takes out his camera from his bag to try and capture it, a mustard and sienna version of the day’s excavated find.

When clouds begin to roll in and close the window of the sky, Kun hurries back up the steep tilt of the town to find his dinner, the crackle of lightning and warning of thunder hot under his skin. The storm releases as he eats, angry against the face of the town, and the locals around him fidget anxiously, closing shops and packing up carts and whispering about storms and bad luck and restless, ancient spirits. 

It isn’t until the storm’s run most of its course that Kun suddenly realizes his camera isn’t in his bag.

It’s stupid to think it’s still safe there on the rock, but Kun leaves his hostel and slips his way down to look anyway, shoes slick on wet stone.

The borrowed lantern finds him nothing. His camera is gone, probably a million pieces of expensive glass among the rocks, but Kun hardly notices the loss. He’s too in shock at the man swimming through the pounding storm-remnant surf toward the shore.

How he’s not drowning, Kun doesn’t know. Some kind of Herculean strength he must possess, to keep his head mostly above water and fight for each stroke towards safety, and Kun finds himself dropping to his knees to shout into the horsetail whip winds.

“This way!” he calls over the water in the darkness. “You’re almost there! Don’t stop!”

There’s a small ladder that extends down to the dark water, and if the man can just make it there, Kun can help pull him up to solid, if slippery, ground. He waves his arms but cannot tell if the man can see him.

Kun waits, anxious with each wave the man presses through, until soon he’s near enough to call to again, and Kun raises his voice to direct him to the ladder he’s so near—but the man pays him no heed, his hands finding rough rock instead, and the lantern doesn’t shed enough light for Kun to see how to reach down to help. His heart pounds; surely the man will be beaten unconscious against what he’s trying to climb, and soon Kun will see him floating and have to choose how to rescue him.

Then the man pulls himself over the ledge, dripping seawater onto stone.

Kun scrambles back, standing in tandem with the man. Both are breathless. Black hair plasters to the man’s face and he heaves in air, and Kun is amazed to find him dressed only in what looks like a swathe of black cloth, wrapped around his waist and thighs something like shorts.

His feet are sandaled with long ties up his calves, the leather dark with moisture, and around each of his biceps curls an elegant band of wrought gold. The rest of the man’s skin is bare but for the water that clings to him, droplets sparkling blue in the intermittent moonlight, and a leather strap over his chest that Kun realizes holds a sword to his back. 

Kun feels dumbstruck. This man is so young.

“Are you alright?” he asks, finally.

The man looks up, and his eyes pierce through Kun, twin daggers over Aquiline nose, lips set firm and jaw tight to his chin.

He does not look at Kun. He looks through him. 

Then, he bursts into a lunge, and Kun braces to be tackled down.

Instead, the man dashes forward and passes through Kun’s body as though he were nothing but air.

No, no. Kun gasps, staggering back. It’s not Kun who is air, but the man, whose image shudders as he races behind Kun up the hill, cutting a path that takes his body through solid stone wall and boat and even iron railing. Forgetting anything else, Kun runs to follow him. 

He’s hard pressed to catch up. The inclined ground is slick underfoot and Kun is no athlete, not compared to the obvious strength of the ethereal man he chases. Then, however, the man stumbles, halfway up the hill and hard into the street, hitting his knees and elbows and even chin against cobblestone.

Kun sucks in a gasp, reaching him and taking a knee to…to? To see the man pull ragged breaths, blood on his jaw, before turning his eyes uphill with a look so fierce Kun feels ice down his spine. 

He pushes up and dashes off again, Kun doing his best to keep up. He cannot guess where the man is headed; the town ends abruptly at the crest of the hill, and on its crown is nothing but trees and rock in the open air, dark in the blanket of night and sweep of wind. They run headlong towards it anyway, Kun nearly at the last of his ability as the man pulls further and further ahead. He’s running at nothing, and Kun thinks about giving it up and calling this all a strange dream. Then, the facade of a small temple shimmers into view and the man hurries between its columns. Kun staggers to a halt to stare in wonder, panting, and then stumbles in after him.

Inside, the young man kneels before a god.

Although it has not seemed the man has truly seen him once, Kun holds completely still in the anterior, arching columns keeping him in shadow.

The god stands two steps above the man, arms crossed loosely, gleaming white robes cinched at his waist and chin turned aside disinterestedly.

“If you could not protect them, why should I?” He asks, voice resonant with disdain. “Are you not the protector you say you are?”

“Please, I beg of you,” comes the rasped response. “We burn the offerings to you every year. As our patron god, I implore your intervention.” 

A scoff and sneer. “Your patron! Once, perhaps. But what patron god receives less adoration than the one he deigns to call his own?”

“I don’t understand,” says the young man.

“Of course you don’t. If you want my help, then you must give me an act of devotion, to show your fidelity.”

“Anything you ask!”

Kun feels heavy. He’s no man of religion, but it seems that a devotion demanded rather than freely given cannot be a true sign of faith.

The god bends, placing a hand on the sword strapped to the man’s back.

“I will save them if you give me your life. Here. Now.”

Up shoots the man’s gaze, panic stricken. “My life?”

“Yes, your life. Your blood spilled in devotion, and I will pluck them from the ship now and restore them to the safety of your home. But your life must end.”

The god draws the sword as the man quakes beneath him on the stone floor.

Kun can’t breathe for the horror in his lungs.

Death? A devotion of death, to this haughty god? He feels sick; he wants to cry out. But until now his words have fallen unheard—there is no way he knows to interfere, and fear itself of the wrath of a god keeps him silent.

The man allows the blade to slide free from its fastenings, and taking a steadying breath draws himself up. “By your divine word, if I die here, you will save them?”

“I swear it to you, Jeno of Isle Saxea.”

“Then do it,” he, Jeno, demands, then takes the sword and drives it through his own chest.

The god watches, a smile of satisfaction on his lips, as Jeno crumples to his knees, blood pooling beneath him till it touches the blunt edge of the step.

“By your blood, foolish lamb, I go,” he says, tone mocking, and vanishes. 

Kun stumbles out of the shadow to where Jeno fell, the space illuminated by the coppery dishes of flame hung around the room and moonlight streaming through the arches to his left. He drops to his knees at Jeno’s side and hovers, needing to help, but when he reaches to lift Jeno off his blade his hand meets nothing solid. Even the blood crawling in its widening radius pays Kun’s damp shoes no heed. There’s nothing Kun can do but watch the last few tortured breaths whine from Jeno’s lips as his eyes glass over, and he goes still.

As he does, the vision itself flickers, goes indistinct like a pointillism painting before Kun’s eyes, and disappears.

Hard ground meets him as Kun sits back in shock, alone then on the crown of the hill, the grass prickling his fingers still wet from the dispersed storm.

That night, he hardly sleeps. 

Kun nearly misses his bus while staring down at the sea the next morning, trying to convince himself it was only some kind of sleepwalking dream. But his camera is still gone, and so clear in his mind is that determined face that he can think of nothing else. That is, until the archaeological crew unearths remnants of a sword on the site. Preserved with obvious care, inside a chest nearly unidentifiable as such, its blade thick with layered rust and corroded soil deposits. But Kun recognizes the hilt, the black stone in the pommel. 

He’s seen it before, strapped to a glistening back, protruding from a bloody chest. 

He takes a break from working to sit in the tent, gulping down water and feeling nonetheless dizzy despite. 

None of his preparation for this dig could have been enough. Kun knows what the documents said, that it was a family home, and probably the foremost family in the area considering the size and placement on the ridge next to the modern town. 

But Kun can feel it now. That there’s more, a story perhaps not put in emails and official site papers. That evening in town, Kun corners the oldest person he can find in the bistro and begs for history to be opened to him. 

“Who lived here?” Kun asks. The locals turn their lips, but finally answer. Lore speaks of a family, stewards of the land, and a handsome son. Of the land’s jealous god, unhappy that the son received more attention. And how the family was attacked, captured as slaves all but the son, who dove into the sea after them, but failed. Who returned to beg their god to save his family, and had his wish granted—at the cost of his life. How the family and community never recovered from their grief, and the island fell into ruin. 

Kun sees the young man’s face in his mind, set with determination on the shore. In pain mid-climb, his body straining. In the temple at the god’s feet, heartbroken, desperate, and falling on his own sword in good faith.

No, Kun thinks. No. It should not have been. Something inside Kun burns; perhaps righteous indignation, perhaps, his heart bleeding for someone so loyal and earnest. Someone whose magnificence deserved to be honored, especially by the god to whom he paid homage. 

Later that night, Kun awakens to the sound of rain lashing the wall outside his room.

Instinct pulls him from his bed and Kun slides with messy steps down the center street, heart racing as he approaches the coastline. This time he has no lantern, and in the darkness and storm his wet glasses are of no use.

He must be insane. Surely he is.

And maybe it’s still true, but as the storm breaks and peters out, Kun squints to see a dot among the waves.

He holds his breath as Jeno swims to shore again.

The scene repeats itself the same, as Kun watches. Jeno climbs from the water, pauses, and then takes off up the hill. Kun follows, struggling to match him, taking breaths in the moment when Jeno stumbles, wishing he could help in some way, knowing he can’t impact a memory.

It must be a memory, buried so deep into the island that no amount of archaeological excavation could make it surface, but only the raw energy of the sky in full storm, breaking the spaces between time down and crunching it all together. Putting Kun beside a young prince of a man and his infinite failure.

It pains Kun to his core to watch him kneel before the god again. To watch him die, and disappear.

The locals complain about the weather, murmurs of it being the worst season in the year. It storms every night for five days, and each of them Kun chases a ghost from shoreline to hilltop and watches him perish at the behest of a mocking god, for the sake of his family. Kun isn’t sure why he keeps going each night, why he can’t look away each time the pain slices through Jeno’s face as the sword pierces into his skin. As if maybe, one of these times, it will go differently, if he just keeps watching. Maybe the legend will alter, and Jeno will return to shore on a ship with his family, or the god will take his hand and walk them both down to return to safety. 

For five nights it does not change. And for five days, Kun wanders through the remains of Jeno’s home, wondering how his family lived there without him after their return. 

He wonders about the temple, too; why there is no remnant of it left, and asks once more in the market street. “The ancestors had no love for that god,” the old woman tells him. “The stories say they tore his temple stone from stone and burnt everything else. That’s why there’s nothing to find.”

Kun thinks, it’s what he would have done too, had he been the one to find the body bled out on the temple floor. He too would have gone mad with grief; he already has. 

This knowledge haunts Kun into the sixth night as the winds gather and another storm clouds over the sea, tumbling angrily towards the island. 

“I won’t go tonight,” whispers Kun to himself, sitting on the floor of his room as the light flickers against the storm’s power. “I don’t want to see it again.” He tries to distract himself with his work, but the sketches of the ruins only remind him of the ghost he’ll soon miss climbing the hill, and before he can stop himself Kun leaves his room once again.

This time, he doesn’t go down to the water. Instead, he waits, watching the slope as the dispersing clouds walk shadows across the stones. When the moon reaches her height, Kun sees the spectral figure making his ascent.

When he falls, Kun is waiting there. “Stop here, please,” Kun begs, unable to caress the sea and sweat soaked cheek though he tries. “Don’t go any further. Don’t you know you’ll die?”

He’s ignored, and it hurts even as he expected it. Kun stands and begins climbing first, getting a head start. He knows the way, and isn’t surprised when Jeno passes him at the crest, the temple shimmering into view and Jeno entering a few strides ahead of Kun.

The nightmarish exchange has already begun when Kun steps inside.

“If you want my help, then you must give me an act devotion, to show your fidelity.”

“Anything you ask!”

“Don’t say that,” Kun whispers, pleading. “Be stronger.”

The black stone on the sword’s pommel glints in the firelight as the god’s fingers smooth over it.

“I will save them if you give me your life. Here. Now.”

“My life?” Jeno says as always, voice breaking, trembling.

“Yes, your life. Your blood spilled in devotion, and I will pluck them from the ship now and restore them to the safety of your home. But your life must end.”

“By your divine word, if I die here, you will save them?”

“I swear it to you, Jeno of Isle Saxea.”

Jeno raises the sword, and anguish floods Kun’s heart. He cannot stay still. He rushes into the center of the temple behind them, because he cannot watch the man he’s so suddenly, utterly come to love die again.

“Stop!” Kun shouts, recklessly, madly.

And Jeno…stops.

The flames flicker along the walls and Jeno hesitates, head swiveling, and the god himself looks up and around the room.

Kun loses his breath, but they don’t seem to see him. _They heard him._

“Stay your sword,” he dares again, forcing his voice firm, commanding. “Demand more from your god.”

Jeno’s mouth gapes, his large eyes wide and full of moonlight. Before him a look of frightened rage takes over the god’s face.

“I think,” says Jeno lowly, his shoulders steeling, “divine one, that you owe me better succor.”

“I owe you noth-“

“Or did the voice of a higher god not just speak?”

The god releases a snarl. “I will not be undermined in my own temple!”

“You will.” He does not know how it can be, but Kun speaks again and fiercely, and the god flinches as fear pinches his brow.

Kun draws closer, passing Jeno to stand on the same step as the god, drawing close to his shining skin.

“Fulfill your obligation to this place, to this man. Or see your power stripped.”

They are words Kun can do nothing to back if tested, and he holds his breath as the god shakes with fury.

“I…will fulfill it.” The reply seethes from between clenched teeth.

As it’s spoken, Kun looks to Jeno, a wild joy rising in him, and quietly gasps.

Amid tears, Jeno is smiling. For the first time, he shows no sign of pain. “Give me your oath, that you’ll save them now.”

“As god of this Isle, I swear it.” With oath spoken, he vanishes, but this time not over Jeno’s dying form.

No, this time, thought Kun can hardly believe it, he does not watch Jeno die. Instead, he watches him fall to his knees and weep into the crook of his arm, sword clattering onto the marble without drawing a drop of blood.

“Thank you, thank you,” Jeno whispers between sobs.

Kun kneels, and though still unable to touch him, says, “You shine too brightly to die so young. Live like that instead, and never again let the god of this hill bear down on your weakness. Make him keep his oath.”

Jeno nods, face tear-soaked. “That, I swear to do.”

“Go home, then, Jeno.”

Taking his sword, Jeno stands and wipes his face, returns the blade to its sheath at his back. He glances high, and dips a bow that Kun nearly laughs to realize is meant for him. Then Jeno walks from the temple, shoulders back and chin lifted, and as he goes the vision fades away to nothing.

Kun walks down the hill in silence. What this all means, he does not know, cannot guess. All he can do is go to bed, Jeno’s smile of relief etched inside his eyelids.

~//~

The new dig has Kun’s name on the paperwork as credited with the discovery. He’s been leasing a villa since he arrived, the two dig sites promising a long stay in order to complete excavation. But his soul feels tied here; he has vivid memories somehow of a string of dreams, of a man in the sea and storms and an ultimatum in a temple on the hilltop. The place is deeply familiar to him, and part of him believes these dreams were somehow something he lived.

But perhaps he’s just been obsessed with the island’s rich lore for too long. With the story of its ancient hero, the man who forced a god to yield.

Kun he opens the dig and leads the work, and hires hands to help with the excavation. He lets his assistant choose the workers, and devotes his time to marking out the location of the site in perfect detail, so that when the hands all come onsite their work will be clearly laid out for them. Some are local, some come from other towns; Kun doesn’t care, so long as they’re careful with their work. This place is precious to him. So when he sees one man standing before a section of the hill in hesitation, he approaches from behind to make sure he knows what he’s doing.

“If it’s your first day, I can work alongside you,” Kun offers.

The man turns to him, and Kun turns to marble. Dark eyes pierce him through, and even when the firm set lips begin to speak he can hardly breathe.

It’s him. Kun has watched that face fight, beg, and die too many times in his dreams to be uncertain. His obsession is standing real and material in front of him, and Kun only holds himself back by the thinnest of threads.

Jeno is there.

“I apologize,” he says, “I promise I know what I’m doing it’s just…this is big, for me.” His voice is deep, youthful, and strong and Kun’s chest aches.

He continues, “this was my ancestral family’s land.” He clenches a fist over his heart. “This ground is my history.”

Kun knows. He knows it, because nothing could be more clear. Nothing except—

“Anyway,” says the man, “this is your dig, right? Doctor Qian? It’s an honor. My name is—“

“Jeno,” Kun finishes for him, relishing the look of surprise. “I'm right, aren't I? That’s how they named you? I know the legend,” he admits, “did you know you look just like him?”

Jeno’s skin flushes and he scratches at the tuft of hair at his nape. “I’m not sure how anyone would know, since there’s never been an accurate depiction found. But I do get told I look like the historical guesses. Haha.” He smiles shyly, a warmth in his eyes.

“Trust me,” says Kun, “as an expert, you might as well be him reincarnate. I…I look forward to having you work on this project, with me.”

A light breeze ruffles the trees and the loose ends of their clothing and Jeno’s smile breaks wider. “Perhaps it’s my destiny.” 

Kun can’t help but laugh. “Only if you want it to be, Jeno. I’m told you have the power to make the knees of gods bend.”

“Oh,” Jeno splutters, “No, I…I only share the legend’s name. That’s all.”

Perhaps, thinks Kun, but the way the wind shifts around Jeno, he thinks it might be more.

“Would you swear it?”

~//~  
  


**Author's Note:**

> if anyone ever at all wants to talk to me about them, please. do it. i will never not be thinking about them. thank u.
> 
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/ImJaeBabie)   
> or twt @imjaebabie


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